


Vigilant

by romanticalgirl



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freedom of the mind</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigilant

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/)**inlovewithnight** for the beta. I've only seen through S4, so please don't spoil me.
> 
> Originally posted 8-11-08

It’s three feet from the bed to the door.

Tim knows because he’s counted, measured it off in his head, and talked incessantly about it to Frank. Frank, who remains uncharacteristically silent, and so Tim has been providing the dialogue for him. He knows his partner well enough to know what he’d say, how eloquently he’d tell Tim to shut the _hell_ up. But that doesn’t stop Tim from talking. If he doesn’t talk, he’ll go crazy - _crazier_ \- and start grabbing the doctors and the nurses and the orderlies and the candy stripers until someone tells him when Frank is going to wake up and tell him to get back to doing his damn job.

He’s measured all the other parts of the room in strides and inches, getting down on his hands and knees and factoring in the distance between the edge of the bed and the wheels. He does everything he can to avoid seeing Frank lying there, not moving, not talking, not yelling, not doing anything. Except for the distance between the bed and the wall and the bed and the door, everything else is perfectly symmetrical, and it takes effort not to pull the bed out a foot or so and make it all line up. Of course, if he pulls the bed out, then the curtain would hit the bed, and somehow that makes Tim think of the morgue, with the sheet over the body, and so he quickly shoved it back the one time he did it, careful but quick because Frank isn’t dead.

Frank isn’t dead.

Tim is careful with him. He thinks about the few times Mary’s let him hold Olivia, and it’s like that. Like holding a baby who has to trust you, has to cling to you for support and comfort and everything else. Tim’s like that with Frank, barely touching him when he lets his fingers slide over the back of Frank’s hand, when he grasps it, holding on like Olivia when she wraps her fingers around Tim’s. Holding on for dear life.

It’s like being a baby, Tim decides. Needing someone else for everything, but Frank doesn’t smell the way Olivia does, baby soft and powder sweet. Frank has that musty rubbery smell of hospitals, the slightly sour smell of body odor. He also has that dry, warm smell that’s simply Frank in Tim’s mind, and Tim inhales it, holding Frank’s hand to his face, breathing him in. “Please, Frank.” His lips move against Frank’s skin as he whispers, never saying more than that when he’s with him like this. It’s almost like praying, and Tim’s not sure he believes in God, but he believes in Frank, and so he offers up his own silent promises.

He’ll be a better detective. He’ll be less annoying. He’ll get on Frank’s nerves less. He won’t talk about all the things that he talks about all the time that drive Frank crazy. He won’t mention how Frank doesn’t get Baltimore. He won’t talk about being a father. He won’t talk about women, and he won’t talk about sex. He’ll sit silently in the car unless they’re talking about a case. He’ll do everything he has to if it means that Frank will open his eyes, will talk, will yell, will be _Frank_.

Mary and Gee and the others move through Tim’s periphery. He doesn’t really see them, can’t really see them, when everything he has is devoted to Frank. Even when he takes Olivia out of the room so Mary can be alone with Frank, Tim’s watching through the one blind that doesn’t quite close right. Watches her cry, watches her kiss him, watches her touch him like a wife, like a lover. When the others are there, and the do come by, they sometimes hold Olivia or talk to Frank, and Tim has to stand aside, has to move way from his vigil. Megan tries to talk to him, but he’s not sure of what he answers, and she stops after a while. Maybe they all think he’s crazy. Maybe he is.

Tim’s never had a partner before Frank. Not on his job on the mayor’s security detail, not in life. Maybe Jim was his partner in a lot of ways, but that was more about family. The people that you have because they’re given to you. Sure, he was assigned to work with Frank, and so in a way Gee gave Frank to him, but he and Frank make it work. They fight and they argue and they hold grudges, but when it boils down to it, they’re there for each other. They’re like grilled cheese sandwiches – comfort food. Home.

Tim stands over Frank sometimes, his long fingers tracing the ridges of Frank’s brow, the slope of his cheek. It’s not sexual, not really. It’s more like comfort. Tim doesn’t think about Frank like that, not the way so many people might classify it if they were to see him, fingers gliding over Frank’s dark skin. It’s about partnership and trust, it’s about love and companionship. Tim doesn’t fool himself into believing he and Frank are really friends, but they’re something. Something more. Something special.

Nights are the worst. He can’t pace at night and he can’t sit still. He can’t pray and he can’t sleep. He just sits there at Frank’s bedside and holds his hand. He makes promises to be better and only hopes that he’ll have the chance to make good on them, not sure what he’ll do if he doesn’t.  



End file.
